By Aziah Siid
Originally appeared in Word in Black
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress passed a $190 billion spending bill that helped school districts pay for sudden, costly expenses, including shutting down and reopening schools. Administrators in districts, particularly majority-Black districts, used some of the money to pay for things that enhanced students’ education: tutoring, extended summer learning, afterschool programs, paying staff, and more.
The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, however, is set to expire this fall. As school officials are scrambling to spend some $50 million in unused funds, Congress is cracking down on how the money is and was spent.
Yet as Black students continue to lag behind their white peers in math and reading — and face serious mental health issues, including a disturbing increase in suicide rates among Black girls — some experts say governments must find a way to replace those funds.
Yet as Black students continue to lag behind their white peers in math and reading — and face serious mental health issues, including a disturbing increase in suicide rates among Black girls — some experts say governments must find a way to replace those funds.
“States really need to step up and make sure that these services that are necessary to create the safe and supportive schools that our students need are either maintained or supplemented,” Eric Duncan, director of pupil policy at Education Trust, tells Word In Black
In 2021, as schools remained closed and online learning took hold, the federal government approved and distributed multiple waves of funds totaling $190 million to districts during the shutdown and reopening of schools. As the pandemic eased and schools reopened, districts have used the funds at their discretion, including addressing the needs of struggling students.
Ensuring Funds Are Spent Correctly
When Republicans took control of Congress after the 2022 midterm elections, however, they took notice of how ESSER funds were being spent. Audits of ESSER funds “have shown a high potential for waste, fraud, and abuse in these funds as they were intended to support students,” according to a press release from the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.
At a January hearing, Rep. Eric Burlison, a Missouri Republican and committee member, said ESSER funds were often misused and spent to support “woke” left-wing political ideologies.
“While there were some schools that spent the money appropriately, There were far too many that used it for nonsense like DEI programs, critical race theory, gender ideology, & other woke programming.” Congress has a responsibility to question how the schools are paying taxpayer dollars and how they are being effective in spending those dollars.”
Virginia Gentles, director of the Education Freedom Center at the Independent Women’s Forum, said schools that spent the money to address gaps in education wasted the money on issues that had already existed for quite some time — and didn’t get much bang for the buck.
“A common excuse for declining student performance, which began years before the COVID-era closures, is that schools are chronically underfunded,” she said “Yet, scores have plummeted to historic lows, despite the 190 billion federal elementary and secondary school emergency relief,” Gentles wrote.
But Duncan says he has seen cases in which school districts showed up for their students with laptops, and immersive afterschool programs. Still, it is the responsibility of school districts to allocate funds to schools that need it most.
“Maybe districts could have done more to provide more mental health professionals and buildings, create what we call Safe Schools, which are more positive and affirming climates for students, have more counselors in school, less police, things like that,” Duncan says.
Ultimately, Duncan says, how districts spent their ESSER funds underscored a big problem.
“The spotlight is on how we have not educated our students. We should have been for years and years,” Duncan says. “Whether it’s early literacy, making sure that we don’t have 80% of black fourth-graders not reading on grade level. The test scores with math and reading being as low as they’ve been in 30-some years. Students are having huge mental health issues, and chronic absenteeism — not feeling comfortable or safe going to school.”
“The issue is about the system’s failing our students and the people that we’re trying to serve,” he says. “This is getting attention now.”
